Little Golden Book Monday #91

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Goliath II. I am not sure of the date of the book as the inside front page is missing from the book, but the Goliath II short was released in 1960, so I would guess that this book was released around that time. I usually don't bother purchasing books in such poor shape, but as soon as I took a look at a few of the pages inside, I knew I had to have this one for my collection! The artwork is obviously done by Bill Peet, who just happens to be my absolute favorite children's book writer/artist.
Once I started writing this, I decided I needed to stop at watch the Goliath II short, so I popped some popcorn, and popped in disc 2 of the Walt Disney Treasures "Disney Reties" DVD set. It turns out the short was written by Bill Peet, but after watching the short, I didn't find that the artwork was very Bill Peet like, and since he didn't receive any credit for art, it would seem he didn't have much if anything to do with the artwork for the film. The Little Golden Book version however was obviously drawn by Bill Peet. You can see the obvious similarities to the artwork in his 1959 children's story "Hubert's Hair-Raising Adventure" which is the illustration right below (the other two illustrations are from the Goliath II book).
Something I learned from watching the Leonard Maltin introduction to the Disney Rarities disc 2 is that the Goliath II short was nominated for an Oscar for Best Short Subject, Cartoons, in 1961.
All in all I would say this book was well worth the 10 cents I paid for it at the local thrift shop!

Disneyland's Summer Nightastic!

With Disneyland's Nightastic! opening up this summer, I have been seeing lots of Nightastic artwork on the net, and they all feature the two Disney dragons from Fantasmic and Pete's Dragon. Here is the recent covers of the free guides at Disneyland and California Adventure withe the Disneyland guide featuring the dragon from Fantasmic and the California Adventure one featuring Pete's Dragon from the Main Street Electrical Parade.
I have always loved the dragon from Sleeping Beauty (my favorite Disney animated film), and Fantasmic is a favorite of mine. When I was at Disneyland back in 1992 when the show opened, I picked up a very cool Fantasmic! soft cover book for $5.95. The book is 8 1/2 inches square and has 26 pages, and and the front cover folds out with 3 panels to reveal a great drawing of Mickey battling the dragon. Inside is a nice pictorial souvenir of the show along with the story behind the show.
The inside fold out has a great 2 page drawing which looks like it may have been a promotional sign promoting Fantasmic, with the words "Opening Spring '92".

Family Circus... What a Mess!

The wife has gone out of town for the weekend and left Kaden and I to look after ourselves... Amazing how much of a mess an old guy and a 4 year old can make in just two days! We've played with our Hot Wheels cars and race track, we've played with just about every superhero action figure ever made, we've played with our vintage set of Lincoln Logs, we've sat around reading piles of comic books, we've watched a ton of cartoons on Teletoon Retro, and now the house looks a lot like the covers of these two old Family Circus books.

Little Golden Book Monday #90

Today's Little Golden Book is a great one from 1959. It's Hanna-Barbera's Ruff and Reddy. I actually do not remember ever seeing these characters on TV as a kid, but as an adult, I have an appreciation for all things Hanna-Barbera. Their cartoons did not always contain the best animation and the characters could be pretty weak at times, but as a kid growing up watching cartoons in the 70's Hanna-Barbera have left a lasting impression on me. I am always pleased to find an old 50's or 60's Little Golden Book in amongst a pile of otherwise lame books. This is one of those great finds... well wroth the 20 cents I paid!
After choosing this particular book for today's post, I remembered that I had also picked up a Dell Comics Ruff and Reddy comic book in a pile of old comics recently. This issue is #981 from April-June 1959. So apparently as well as their cartoon series, they also had their own comic book title. I still don't remember them though!

Angelina Jolie / Tomb Raider Got Milk?

I picked up a bunch of old comics the other day and as I was going though them, I noticed that a bunch of them had great ads on the back covers. Here is one of those ads. It is a 2003 Got Milk? ad with Angelina Jolie / Tomb Raider.

Little Golden Book Monday #89

I just about forgot about Little Golden Book Monday tongiht. Its getting late, so I just went in and grabbed a handful of books from my shelf to pick one for today. This one, seemed perfect. Its Margaret Wise Brown's The Sleepy Book, originally from 1948. This edition is from 1975. The little bear on the front reminds me a lot of the Travelodge / Sleepy Bear Motel logo that was on a drinking glass we had at home when I was a kid. I tried looking for the logo I remembered using a Google image search, and was surprised that I could not find the logo I remembered (now I can't wait to talk to my mother to see if she still has it!).. The Sleepy Book is filled with short stories, poems, and songs about sleep. As if I wasn't tired enough already, flipping though this book has almost putting me into a coma... Good night!

Batman comics score!

Today my son and I went to a comic shop that we do not visit very often. I was looking for the Boom Studios Incredibles comic issue #2 (which seems to be sold out everywhere!) as well as any cheap old Batman comics and any comics for Kaden - he likes Batman, Spiderman and the Teen Titans. There was a sign outside the shop which said "hundreds of comics for 25 cents each!" We had a blast going though the 25 cent and dollar boxes and found a ton of great stuff for Kaden and myself, including a bunch of 70's, 80's & 90's Batman and Detective Comics, which are the two titles that I am currently having fun trying to collect. Check out the photos of my Batman comics score!
Unfortunately we did not find a copy of the Incredibles comic we were searching for (cue disappointment music).

Wizard of Oz Lp cover

I picked up some more fun looking records at the Salvation Army on Friday. Among them was this really neat looking Cricket Records version of the Wizard of Oz with the Hanky Pank Players, with orchestra and chorus. I love how the letters in the title look like someone took a pen and doodled in them. Sadly this one album was sans record - but they did give me this nice looking record cover for free!
I have never been a big fan of the movie "Wizard of Oz", but I do remember going to see it in the movie theater some time in the late 80's when they rereleased it. At some point near the beginning I fell asleep and stayed asleep until the credits. Afterwards my wife was abuzz with excitement about the movie she had just seen. Wasn't it grand she asked!? All I could say was, "yeah, and the whole thing was in black and white, right!"

What's UP with this!?

This August, just a little more than two months after the release of Disney/Pixar's UP to theaters, comes the GoodTimes Home Video movie called What’s Up: Balloon to the Rescue. In the past there have been cheapo versions of Pocahontas, Pinocchio, and other classics, trying to cash in on the successful theater releases of Disney films. This one, is such a rip off, its hard to think that the Disney lawyers won't be contacting GoodTimes for something a little less than some good times!

Little Golden Book Monday #88

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's the Prince and the Pauper. This book is from 1990 and is based on the 1990 short feature that featured Mickey Mouse. The film was released to theaters with the feature film The Rescuers Down Under.
I didn't notice this until I was scanning in this book, but I purchased this book at Disneyland on one of our many trips, for the low price of just $1.29.
I was not yet a collector of Little Golden books back in 1990, but I had seen the Prince and the Pauper film along with the Rescuers Down Under in the theater, and I enjoyed the film so much that I wanted to add this book to my collection.

Batman Birthday Cake

Kaden had his birthday a while back and he wanted a Batman theme for his party. There were the usual Batman cups, napkins etc, and lots of Batman gifts including a Batman costume which he wore for the rest of the day! He also had a special Batmobile birthday cake that looked just like the Batmobile from the Batman Strikes cartoon series, complete with Batman and Robin action figures. I especially liked the graphics on the napkins which were also from the Batman Strikes cartoon series, which is my personal favorite of all the Batman cartoon series.

Oswald the (Lucky) Rabbit

At the Seattle Comic Convention a few months back I picked up this neat old Oswald the Rabbit issue #458 from Dell comics for $1.75. I am a little surprised that I can not find a date inside, and I could not find the answer online. There is a small 53 written on the price sticker of the comic, so I am going to assume this issue is from 1953. Again, I could not find much info online about the Oswald Dell comics, but I find it pretty amazing that there were 458 issues!
This post is mostly an excuse to show the two Oswald the Lucky Rabbit items below. There used to be a great Disney blog site that I would visit almost daily to see great new items that the blogger was working on for the Disney stores (the site has since been removed on Disney's request). These two items, the Oswald Big Fig and Plush were both supposedly available though the Disney stores about a year ago, although I phoned my local Disney stores repeatedly to see if they had these two items in, and all they ever had were some awful looking Oswald Christmas ornaments. If they had ever gotten these items in, I would have happily forked over the large sum of cash I am sure they would have been charging to add these to my collection. But unfortunately they never did show up in my local stores.

Moana Mickey's Arcade

My wife gave me a stack of stuff the other day that she had received from a friend who works at a travel agency. There was tons of Disney brochures, DVDs, posters etc. There were a few 11 x 14 inch cards with info on Adventures by Disney and a 2009 Wald Disney Word Product Reference Guide. These didn't interest me and I was going to toss them out, but I noticed this great picture on one of them for Moana Mickey's Arcade located at the Polynesian Resort in Walt Disney World. I decided to scan this image for myself before tossing out the cards, and I thought I would share it with you!

Little Golden Book Monday #87

On Friday May 29th, opening night, I went to see Up with my wife and 4 year old son Kaden. We chose to see the 3D version, as both were playing at the same cinema. I am not actually sure why someone would chose to see it in 2D when they could see it in 3D - my guess it that once the 3D showings were full, people were forced to see the 2D version. Our theater was so packed that we could not find 3 decent seats together, so Kaden sat on our lap for the entire movie.u I thought the movie was great and loved the 3D. I was very surprised that 10 to 15 minutes into the movie, my son took off his glasses. When I told him to put them back on, he told me, "no, it looks better without them", to which I shrugged and allowed him to continue watching without the glasses. I tilted my head up a few times to look at the screen without my glasses, and found the picture to be somewhat fuzzy looking with the 3D effect on the screen and no glasses. It wasn't until we left the theater that I realized that after eating greasy popcorn for the first few minutes and then touching his lenses repeatedly, it was like looking through greasy saran rap, which is why he didn't want to wear the glasses.
I was pretty surprised that they did not offer a plastic popcorn tub with the Up artwork. There was a time when every kids movie got the popcorn tub treatment.
After the movie, we made a stop at the Chapters book store to have a look for the Little Golden Book version of the film, and sure enough they had a large stack of them, along with all sorts of other assorted coloring books, sticker books, story books etc. It was kind of cool getting to go home from the movie with little souvenir

BATMAN New Times

There is a ton of cool stuff on the internet, and it's impossible to find it all!
Here is something I found a year or two ago and forgot about until tonight when my son and I were hunting though YouTube.com looking for Batman stuff. I remembered seeing this amazing Batman student film a few years back and after a few seconds of Google searching we found it again. What makes this short film so cool is not only is it a very well done short film visually, but they actually got Adam West, Mark Hamill, and Dick Van Dyke to do the voices of Batman, Robin and Commissioner Gordon. Click here to check out the film, and when you are done, click the "Movies" logo at the top right of the screen to see all of their other student films from Dave School the Digital Animation & Visual Effects School.

Little Golden Book Monday #86

Today's Little Golden Book is Pink Panther and Sons: Fun a the Picnic from 1985. I love Pink Panther and I love cartoons, but I don't remember ever seeing this cartoon on TV. I do however remember the "and sons / babies" craze that seemed to sweep though cartoons in the late 80's and early 90's. I do admit to enjoying Muppet Babies and Yo Yogi back in the day. I have even found a few VHS tapes of Yo Yogi episodes I recorded off of TV which I am now sharing with my son who has become somewhat of a Yogi the Bear fan.
As for this particular book, is it just me, or does the Pink Panthers sons kinda look like Care Bears?

Fireworks are Fun for Kids!

While looking though some old comic books, I came across these two ads in a 1948 Kid Colt comic book selling fireworks to kids! The first one I came across was the ad from Acme Sales Co. that says "Get 'em now, Kids!" As I read that I thought, boy, that's kinda funny. But then when I came across the second ad from Famous Banner Fireworks with the drawing of a 5 year old kid lighting what looks like a giant firecracker, cartoon music started playing in my head as I started imagining little Johnny lighting his giant firecracker and then blowing up real good... splat! Wow, how times have changed. Back in 1948 they were selling fireworks right to kids in the pages of comics books - there was no age restriction placed on those order forms. Kids in '48 could be just like Wile E. Coyote with their own exploding Acme products! Like it says in the ad, Zip! Boom! Bang! Oh Boy!

Mad Magazine issue #1000

Look for issue #1000 of Mad Magazine in the year 2134! Until then, check out The Usual Gang of Idiots as they celebrate their 500th issue on newsstands now - or where ever you can still find printed materials for sale!
It's MAD's 500th issue! And it's jam-packed with just as much stupidity as you'd expect! For starters, we're welcoming back some legendary members of the Usual Gang of Idiots who haven't appeared in MAD for years! And to mark this landmark issue, Sergio Aragones is showing off his 500 (that's right five HUNDRED!) favorite Marginal cartoons! Plus, there's Al Jaffee's Snappy Answers to Stupid Questions and the MAD Fold-In! And, of course, you'll find our typical stupidity, mocking the new Wolverine movie, The Jonas Brothers, The Octo-Mom, Google, Man-Boobs and so more! So stop reading and start celebrating – 56 pages for just $5.99 US - go buy an issue NOW!

Little Golden Book Monday #85

Today's Little Golden Book is Scuffy the Tugboat. This copy is the thirteenth printing from 1973, with the original being printed in 1946. I remember having this book as a child, but I don't really remember ever reading it. I do however remember another children's tugboat book titled Little Toot which I remember really enjoying. I have since picked up a hardback anniversary edition of Little Toot and also picked up various vinyl editions of the story including this awesome 1947 Disney edition!

Little Golden Book Monday #84

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and his Space Ship from 1952.
Text from the inside front page says; This is a brand-new story, written and illustrated especially for Golden Books. The Little Golden Books are prepared under the supervision of Mary Reed, Ph.D. formerly of Teachers College, Columbia University.
The Little Golden Books here bring you, in gay color, delightful stories and illustrations adapted from the world-famous Walt Disney Motion Pictures. In them you will find Pinocchio, The Three Little Pigs, Bambi, Dumbo, Uncle Remus, Cinderella, Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, and many other well-loved Disney characters.
Copyright 1952 by Wald Disney Productions. All rights reserved throughout the world by Walt Disney Productions. Designed and produced by The Sandpiper Press and Artists and Writers Guild, Inc. Printed in the United States of America by Western Printing and Lithographing Company. Published by Simon and Schuster, Inc., Rockefeller Center, New York 20, NY.
The artwork inside is great. I really wanted to scan a ton of pages, but as I tried to open the book enough to put it on the scanner I could see that the spine was pretty frail. I managed to scan two pages, but as you can see, I only managed to get 3/4 of the page, but this will give you an idea of how wonderful the drawings are throughout the book.

Captain Canuck Hard Cover from IDW

I am pretty excited about the upcoming release of Captain Canuck, Vol. 1 Hard Cover from IDW this summer (152 pages, $24.99). This first collection reprints issues #4-10 of the original Captain Canuck series. The second volume will contain issues #11-15 and the Summer Special. The remaining first 3 issues will be released as a special collected edition directly from creator Richard Comely. Although I have already preordered my copy of this first volume, I must say that I am somewhat disappointed by the way they have chosen to release these. I would much prefer that they either release the complete 16 issue run in one giant deluxe hard cover edition, or two volumes, the first with issues #1-8 and #9-15 + Summer Special. Ever since I heard about www.librarybinding.com, I have been thinking about creating my own hard cover Captain Canuck book with all the comics in one volume, and after getting this first official hard cover, it may just whet my appetite enough to finally make my own complete edition!

Little Golden Book Monday #83

Todays Little Golden Book is My First Counting Book from 1957. First printing was the year before. I picked this one up the other day at the thrift shop, mostly because I liked the back cover which included a bunch of my favorites, Charlie the car, the Richard Scarry squirrel, the duck in the sleeping cap, Mickey Mouse and Jiminy Cricket.

The original cover price price back in 1957 was just 39 cents, but I got it even cheaper... just 15 pennies!

Little Golden Book Monday #82

Today's Little Golden Book is kind of scary. First off there are the scary looking dolls on the front cover. And then there is the fact that this book looks like someone, or SOMETHING ate the book, just have a look at that back cover! And be sure to check out Bert on the back cover... her certainly looks a little freaked out about something. Even scarier is the fact that my wife saw me scanning this book and asked where I got it? Turns out she had this book as a child (still does somewhere) and knew the story by heart.
The book is Raggedy Ann and Andy; The Little Gray Kitten from 1975.

Coca Cola King Size bottles

I went down to Seattle, WA on Saturday for the Seattle Comic Convention and had a great time (More about that in a day or two). On the way home we stopped at a 7-11 for some snacks and I found these great Coca Cola King Size bottles in the cooler alongside all the other Coke products. They have a sticker stuck to them which says that they are a product of Mexico. Here in Canad we have had the Coca Cola stuby bottles available on and off for many years, but I have have always wished they would bring back the old 355 mil King Size bottles that I remember from the 70's, so seeing these for sale at a 7-11 made my day. I bought a bunch and put them in the fridge when we got home. Today I popped one open and had it with my hot dogs and chips for lunch. And its true... things go better with Coke!

Little Golden Book Monday #81

Today's Little Golden Book is Walt Disney's Mickey Mouse and the Best-Neighbor Contest from 1977. This edition is the sixth edition from 1979. What really sticks out about this book for me is the artwork. It reminds me of all the 70's Disney books I remember from my childhood, when Disney seemed pretty relaxed when it came to the quality of their artwork in books such as this one. I much prefer the classic Disney art from the 30's through 50's and even enjoy the newer stuff which tends to have a very modernized style. The 70's artwork tends to look very amateurish, especially for Disney's standards.

My Frist Video Game: Wallobee Jack

Growing up in the 80's when home video games were gaining popularity with such titles as Space Invaders and Missile Command, I was resigned to visiting friends who owned such things. I don't really remember feeling left out, and I don't remember ever asking for a video game system, so I guess all was well in my childhood even without a game system in my home. I do however remember in the early 90's when CD-Rom games for computers were becoming popular. I purchased my first (and as it turns out, last) video game for the Macintosh 1n 1993. It was called Wallobee Jack: The Bingi Burra Stone as was billed as an interactive toon show. The drawing on the front of the box looked really cool to me and the idea of an interactive cartoon seemed so cool! What a disappointment! The graphics in the game were pretty limited and the actual game consisted of short animated scenes where you had to move the mouse around looking for a hot spot which would then activate the next scene. Obviously games have come a long way since then, but as my introduction to video games, it served to turn me off gaming ever since. To this day, my gaming experience consists of Snood and checkers, both of which are on my Mac and take up less than an hour of my time per week.

A Visual History of the BC Lions Logo

I am a big fan of team logos, and I love seeing the evolution of a team logo. Here is a a short article about the BC Lions of the CFL accompanied by the 5 Lions logos that span from 1954 to present.

Little Golden Book Monday #80

Today's Little Golden Book is When Bunny Grows Up written by Patsy Scarry and illustrated by Richard Scary. This edition is from 1997 and was originally printed in 1955 with the title The Bunny Book.
Growing up I loved Richard Scarry's Busytown books. I could sit for hours looking at his cross section drawings of buildings, vehicles etc. It was so great to get a simplified idea of how things such as a factory worked. I also loved finding Lowly Worm who was hidden on each page page of the Busytown books.
As an adult, I still really appreciate Richard's whimsical drawings. This Little Golden Book is another example of his great work. Here is one of the pages I liked the most in this book. I wonder if little rabbit got in trouble for painting on the wall, or was congratulated for his work?

Firehouse Magazine cover montage

Today while reading the January 2009 issue of Mac World magazine, I became fixated on a two page spread that showed a cover gallery of every issue of Mac World magazine. It got me thinking how cool it would be to have something like that for my magazine, Firehouse Magazine. It didn't take long before I was sitting at my Mac digging though my Firehouse web site folder looking for scans of my magazine covers. Although I didn't have scans of all the covers, I did have issues #39 though 80 (issue 80 was our last issue, in 2000). Twenty minutes later I had whipped up this montage of the last 10 years of Firehouse Magazine covers. Although many of the cover scans are awful, I was still very pleased with the outcome. Perhaps at a later date I will sit and rescan all 80 covers and make a complete cover montage. Until then, this looks great as my computer desktop!

Little Golden Book Monday #79

Today's book is Bravest Of All. This version is the second printing from 1974 with the first printing being from 1973. Not much to say about this one except of note is the 49 cent price on the cover. And, as you may or may not remember, I like anything to do with firetrucks, etc so this is yet another fireman book in my Little Golden Book collection.

Tell-A-Tale Books Day 3

Here are four more great old Tell-A-Tale books. Woody Woodpecker Shoots the Works from 1955, Walt Disney Productions' Robin Hood and Skippy's Best Birthday from 1973, How To Be A Grouch by Oscar the Grouch from 1976, and Roy Rogers and the Sure 'Nough Cowpoke from 1952.